Today's manual laborers are no longer celebrated with hymns of
praise. They must be content with encouraging one another that
backbreaking work is better than no work at all...

In the Ukraine, a group of men spend long days crawling through
cramped shafts of illegal coal mines. Sulfur gatherers in
Indonesia brave the smoky heat of an active volcano and the
treacherous trip back down. Blood, fire and stench are routine
for workers at a crowded open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria.
Pakistani men use little more than their bare hands to dismantle
an abandoned oil tanker for scrap metal. Steelworkers in China
fear they could be a dying breed...